[StarBuG]

2 days ago I made a big change to my website that hopefully will increase my earnings a lot over time.

So far I made extensive use of Adsense channels to track each of my Ads separately.
I also activated "placement targeting" for the best performing ad placements.

However I did not realize the full potential of "placement targeting" until 3days after I talked to my direct advertising marketer.

Q: What is the main goal of an advertiser?
A: To show there ads to their target group which most likely will convert

Q: Is wider or narrower targeting more effective?
A: I think it depends but mostly the more narrow the target group is, the better the Ads perform

Just as info to you:
CPM prices for a very narrow targeting e.g. topics about "cough" or "skin rash" are 40-50$ (campaigns that my direct advertising marketer runs)
Campaigns that are not that narrow e.g. health only get 10-20$ CPM.
Yes, it makes that much of a difference.

So what did I do?

I created a separate channel for each forum category that is interesting to advertisers e.g. health, diseases, nutrition, alternative medicine, etc. for the ad in this welcome message.
Each of these channels was selected for placement targeting and got a description that outlined the topics in which these ads will be shown.

Then I created several large rectangle ads and assigned each one a category channel I created before.

Now each thread in a specific forum shows the Ad with the channel that was created for this specific forum.
(At the bottom you'll find the condition chain I created to show different ad channel in each forum)

Now each advertiser can narrow down the placement targeting on my website to a certain topic which suites his campaign best.
For example an advertiser who is selling homeopathy can now target his Ads to my forum "alternative medicine" and his ads are only shown to people interested in "alternative medicine".
This way conversion and CTR should increase quite a bit and a lot more advertisers should use placement targeting on my website over time and with that increase my earnings.

To understand the naming concept for channels that I use read my post: Google Adsense - The Secret to using Channels

Remember if you create these channels activate placement targeting for each channel and use a informative description!
I used:

Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement: YES
Ads appear on: other pages > TOPIC of the forum (e.g. alternative medicine)
Ad location: Top Center
Description: Your Ads will only appear on discussion pages with the topic "Topic of your forum". Short Description of my website.

and here is the condition code you can wrap around the above posted mod code:

<vb:if condition="THIS_SCRIPT != 'search' AND THIS_SCRIPT != 'index' AND THIS_SCRIPT != 'showthread' AND !$show['notices'] AND $show['guest']">

WELCOME Message + LARGE RECTANGLE that is shown on all places except Homepage, Threads and Search.
I called the channel "PatFra - LR - Welcome Remainder"

</vb:if>

<vb:if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'showthread' AND !$show['notices'] AND $show['guest']">
 <div class="ads_lr_wrapper">
  <div class="ads_lr">
   <vb:if condition="$GLOBALS[forumid] == ForumID">
    
    ADSENSE Code for Large Rectangle shown on all Threads (and threads only!) in my "Health and prevention" forum
    Channel: PatFra - LR - WT - Health & Prevention
    (PatFra = Patientenfragen.net = Website Tag | LR = Large Rectangle = Ad Size | WT = Welcome message in Thread = Ad Location | Health & Prevention = Forum / Topic)
    
   <vb:elseif condition="$GLOBALS[forumid] == ForumID" />
   
    ADSENSE Code for Large Rectangle shown in my "Deseases" Forum
    Channel: PatFra - LR - WT - Deseases   

   <vb:elseif condition="$GLOBALS[forumid] == ForumID" />
    
    and so on.......

   <vb:else />
    
    ADSENSE Code for Large Rectangle shown in all Forums that are not interesting for placement targeting
    e.g. introductions, shit chat, news, etc.
    Channel: PatFra - LR - WT - Rest
    
    
   </vb:if>
  </div>
  <div class="ads_lr_welcome">

  Welcome message, for the code look in the mod thread above

  </div>
 </div>
</vb:if>

<vb:if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'index' AND !$show['notices'] AND $show['guest']">
 
 Welcome Message and Adsense Large rectangle Ad shown on Forum index only.
 Channel: PatFra - LR - Welcome Home
 This ad location is also interesting for many advertisers because 
 some advertisers want to only show their ads on the homepage and not on subpages.
 
</vb:if>

What are your thoughts on this topic?
How do you handle placement targeting?